10 Things I hate about you… Kia EV9 gripe #4

After 8 months and 10,000 miles, I am extremely happy with my 2024 Kia EV9 GT-Line. Nothing is perfect, though, so I’ll walk you through my top 10 gripes with the EV9:

#4 Bad OTAs - or just a specific, persistent safety bug

I CAN’T SEE!

As one of the first Americans to take delivery of the Kia EV9, I’ve been the recipient of a large number of over-the-air (OTA) updates. In general, OTAs are great, as they can fix issues and add features to a vehicle, post-delivery.

Some of these fixes have changed charging behavior, infotainment features, headlight operation, and HVAC functions. A quality-of-life HVAC feature added flips the recirculate mode on automatically when the front windshield washer is activated. Previous to that update, you’d feel like you snorted Windex, when trying to clean bugs off of the windshield. Kudos to that particular feature.

The dark side of OTAs rears its head when you load an update, and it introduces a new bug. Ruh-roh. And that’s exactly what happened to me at some point in the summer. An OTA loaded, and it introduced an odd behavior. If my EV9 was turned on and put into reverse, it will frequently dim the interior screens. What’s the harm? Well, the backup camera display is dimmed, too. In fact, the interior brightness doesn’t come back to normal until some point after “drive” is selected.

This reference is too old for me… I’m sure it’s way too old for most of you

Maybe this is supposed to happen when the headlights are on? I can see where you’d want to reduce the brightness differential between your screens and the outside ambient light level, for the sake of seeing your surroundings. I don’t know why you’d do it in full sunlight, where decreasing the screen brightness can basically make the display invisible.

Months later - and at least a few OTAs later - the issue remains.